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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25655779">The tasting course</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/troutkitty/pseuds/Barb%20G'>Barb G (troutkitty)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Remora [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Hannibal (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Hannibal's content warnings apply., M/M, it's Hannibal</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 02:29:19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,573</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25655779</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/troutkitty/pseuds/Barb%20G</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Will's therapy, and Hannibal's eventual meal plan, progress nicely.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>Remora [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1860160</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The tasting course</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This is the first fanfic I've written in six years while I've been working on my own stuff, but I mainlined Hannibal over quarantine and fell in love all over again.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The tasting course</p><p> </p><p>It was important that the chairs stayed in position. Will had seen me as I had seen him as we stared at each other, lock-stepped in this dance. He followed my lead like a trained dancer would, looking where I wanted him to see, but only seeing what I needed him to understand. He was an exquisite instrument in my hands. It was all I could do to not stroke him to hear the sounds he would make. </p><p>It was a matter of time until I consumed all of him, but I’d enjoy what we had together. More so than he would ever truly understand until he saw me for what I was, even though he was staring right at me. </p><p>For this, I had him look away. It didn’t matter what he was seeing. Every angle in my office showed off only what I wanted seen. Will’s legs started to shake. His knees pressed into the wide corners of the leather seat. His hands splitting himself the rest of the way open was only for show, but it was my show. I enjoyed the strain on him as much as the whole tableau it presented. </p><p>Oh, how revered he would taste, unlike the pigs who just brought their meat to the table. This was the one man in this rude world who could instinctively saw me on his own, even if he lacked the ability, yet, to truly isolate why I excited him. He follows me as the remora fish follows the shark. Evolution taught us all that the safest place to be by the predator is as far away from it as possible, but it had prepared the remora to understand that near the predator’s mouth was the second safest.  </p><p>It was too bad they were considered to be trash fish, better as bait than food. We would toast to our fearful symmetry in some other way than the perfect recipe choice. </p><p>There were those I had put on the back of my chair who at least on some level, were aware they were to be consumed. They were there because the idea itself drew them to me. Will would still run. It would disappoint me if this were all it took for him to let me consume him. What fun would he be if parlour tricks in my parlour worked? No, it was called fishing, not catching for a reason. I didn’t need a stock pond full of starving fish. </p><p>I needed to lure Will out of his safe hiding spot. If I didn’t cut him off from it, he could retreat to it in the end, and I needed him present. Aware. </p><p>Willing. </p><p>If he didn’t care about his well-being, he wouldn’t be here. I wanted him to care more about me than it. I wanted to be his first thought and his last. </p><p>The others had arrived freshly plucked of body hair and sucked in their breath knowingly as I asked them to spread themselves open for me. They were a lot closer to understanding what meal I had chosen to serve them. Will hadn’t even considered it a possibility, and yet he still obeyed. </p><p>My greatest achievement had been bringing seven different patients to seven various realizations that the highest honour they could do for me was to let me serve them at my dinner party even after I had cured them of their petite, petty problems.  I let two of them go after removing their sweetbreads and the long muscles I needed. For a time, of course. I didn’t like to use all parts of them as certain killers did, but I did use up all of the devotion I could. </p><p>They’d all arrived in their own time, as I needed to prepare the courses they represented. The brains of a man who had finally found peace, a haggis made by a woman who had finally controlled her binge eating, so I filled her stomach with the heart and lungs of a man who had finally found his spine to tell his mother to get stuffed. All my guests could only see the beauty of the meat itself, not the beauty of the movement it had culminated. A masterpiece of subtle movement from afar, like playing the theremin. </p><p>“Doctor?” Will asked, as furry as any man would be if suddenly asked out of the blue by his therapist to strip down, bend over, and spread. I wasn’t even his therapist, though I’ve already seen deep inside him without needing to warm my speculum. I would burn his leg and back hair with a blow torch, slowly, letting the scent of it burning fill the room. He would see it as a trust exercise, even if he didn’t know what, exactly, he was trusting me not to do. </p><p>I wasn’t there yet. He wouldn’t lay back and spread his legs so I could lap his skin with acetylene. Not yet. I could manipulate the destination, the methodology and the desired outcome, but never the pace. Will would get there on his own. </p><p>“Doctor,” he said. His tone spoke louder and told me he was annoyed that he’d already spoken, and I hadn’t responded. He still thought he was in charge here, that all of this was of his design, not mine. If I followed that train of thought to even its next logical station, I’d have to slaughter him like one of my pigs. The idea that maybe…just maybe…he might be right was too rude to be allowed to propagate in my mind palace. </p><p>He snorted like this was all still just a game between us. “Are we done?”</p><p>We were weeks away from touching. There were still dozens of positions I could put him in so he could explore the idea of being vulnerable without consequences. To touch him now, especially at his most vulnerable, was a real risk. It would bring us to the next stage, or he would stop coming. </p><p>And if he stopped coming, I would see to it that only his dogs would feast on him. </p><p>But it wasn’t time. </p><p>He leaned back in his chair. He’d found it embarrassing at first, and only the first time, when I had him kneeling on the carpet by the end of the session. I’d let him stay like that all session so that I could look down on him, therapeutically, of course, but also so that he’d remember his place when we were alone. He’d almost fallen asleep it had been that comforting. </p><p>Even if I’d lobotomized him, he’d still be able to make the connection between nudity and vulnerability. He’d taken off his shirt the third time after I touched him over it on the second. Total nudity had progressed voluntarily and without any nudging. It was a pity I couldn’t publish what he shared about himself when he said nothing at all. </p><p>I would prefer appealing to an aesthetics board. Ethics were the banality of the simple mind that feared getting caught above all other consequences of its actions. </p><p>“That’s got to be time,” Will said, trying even harder to draw me in. He was breathing harder than just leaning against the back of a chair should have made him. I wondered what he realized about himself. I’d seen so many obvious understanding suddenly erupt, that, of course, he wasn’t going to leave his wife, she didn’t deserve him, alcohol didn’t solve the problem…but what Will just realized he’d keep to himself unless there was a blow torch on his skin that wasn’t just trying to denude him. </p><p>And even then, I wasn’t sure he wouldn’t deny me: my beautiful, complicated Will. I would see how he worked if I had to put my fist in him. </p><p>But that would mean starting with a finger. I licked the taste off my fingerprint first, not as lubrication but to isolate his taste. I had to know the flavour profile to know what direction I would prepare him. </p><p>I stroked him, once, across his perineum. He had been expecting it. Not in the immediate sense, but he wasn’t a stupid man. If he had been, the surprise would have come at the request for him to get into position or the touch itself. Part of him knew it was going to end this way, and most of that was glad. He’d have no idea how many other positions I could have put him in before I was sure he wouldn’t pull away. </p><p>“Doctor?” he repeated a third time, asking an entirely different question.</p><p>“Yes, Will?”</p><p>“Do you want to explain why you just did that?”</p><p>“I wanted to.”</p><p>“Will you do it again?” He wasn’t asked a question but looking for confirmation. </p><p>“Yes.”</p><p>He turned around. I let him watch me lick my finger. I saw him understand what he wanted to understand, but he still shivered. He may never know that dissonance came from the fact that the part of him that wasn’t ready to listen to the part of him that knew the real reason why I wanted to know his taste. </p><p>Not yet. </p><p>My opus to that point had been a performance that needed to be observed to be heard. This work of art would be us together, with a good finishing salt and a locked room.</p><p>I would be alone when the work finished.</p>
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